All characters over 18.
########## Discovery ##########
The box in front of Mark came with a note inside - in a language he couldn't read - and a device that looked like a watch - unlike any he had seen before. The box was put inside his room, laid on top of his sloppily made bed, in plain-enough view that he had no choice but to notice it when he came home from his summer job that afternoon.
He took a swift look around the room when he had first discovered it and called out through his open door "Mom, Sarah, Danny, Dad?"
There was no response, and typically wouldn't be at this time of day anyways. Mark worked the opening shift at the gym, and was normally waking up and coming back home before the rest of the family was eating lunch.
"My birthday was last month, this must be a prank gift then." He wondered aloud. Mark scanned the room for other signs of entry, hidden cameras that Danny or Sarah might've left. He figured if he opened the package and glitter sprang out, that would be a prank from Danny. If an embarrassing picture was inside, it was Sarah.
Instead, just the watch, with a strap wrapped around a small leather-like cushion inlaid into the bottom of the box, and the note, written on a relatively normal piece of parchment next to the watch.
The watch wasn't the first strange thing about the present, that was the box itself. When he picked it up off the bed it had at first felt heavy for a short moment, then light enough he would have no problem lifting it. It shot a small bolt of what felt like electricity through his arms when he grasped it, then stopped at the same time the box seemingly changed weights. The box also had no discernible opening mechanism. No buttons, no clear lid. After a moment of wondering how his siblings planned on him opening the strange contraption, it responded by cracking open the top of the box, and further opening ninety degrees to reveal its contents inside.
It was a strange prank. Mark wasn't sure what the end game of a watch and an alien note was supposed to be as far as pranks go, but he figured if the device didn't blow up on him, it had to be something complicated. Maybe this was some old antique thing his siblings would convince him to wear to school to embarrass him. Or maybe it was just a gift. Mark wouldn't put it past Danny to come up with some fake language and elaborate box to gift him a weird watch he thought was cool.
Mark picked the note out of the box, determined he wasn't going to make any sense of it yet, and decided to pick the watch up instead. What probably counted as the face was completely black. It was most likely digital, but it hadn't come online yet. Around the face there were 8 inlets, places where it looked like diamonds would be set. Right now the inlets were empty, but from the looks it a larger carat diamond would fit perfectly. There were no buttons or knobs along the side to try and use to turn the watch on, and the strap was larger, and it looked like it would fit a must larger wrist than Mark's.
Whatever this "watch" was, it was made out of a smooth metal, almost too smooth. When you looked at the watch face and strap you couldn't tell where one started and the other stopped, and there was no clear housing for the "face" of the thing. This clearly wasn't an antique, and whoever made it could've charged a pretty penny for it. Mark couldn't make sense out of either of his siblings wasting money on whatever kind of stupid prank this must be.
Tentatively, Mark figured there was only one real way to figure out where the whole setup would lead. "Hope your cameras are still recording!"
He slipped on the watch to his left wrist and felt the same bolt of electricity as before shoot from his left arm nearly all the way to the lower part of his neck. The shock took his eyes off the watch long enough that when he looked back the band had shrunk and conformed to his wrist. What was once a strap that would've fit a man twice his size had come down to a more reasonable size and snug fit. The watch face had somehow also shrunk to a comfortable form, and the inlets looked like they would accommodate much more affordably sized gems.
"I don't know what sort of trick watch this is, but I'm going to kick the ass of whoever put it here!" Mark yelled to the empty house. Truth be told, he was more shocked by the unexplainable properties of the watch than angry at the low level shock it had given him, but had no more doubts about the nature of the prank. Put watch on, get shocked, get posted online for being dumb enough to have worn a mysterious watch planted by his siblings.
Time to get the watch off. Only that, he found the watch refused to budge.
The watch was a little more than snug on his wrist, it was absolutely tight, and any attempt to find a place you could undo the strap or free your wrist failed. "Ok so... how do I get the watch off now?" Mark told the imaginary cameras he figured were watching the scene. "I get it, I'm stupid, it's a fun trick watch, but I don't want to be shocked again!" He tried to get under the strap to see if he could loosen the strap enough to get the watch off his arm, but it almost seemed as if the entire thing was fused completely to him.
Mark stopped for a moment and stared at the new, seemingly permanent, resident on his wrist. When he finally accepted that it might be there to stay, the bezel-less face came alive.
It looked like an LED screen, but looked like it had far more definition than any smart watch he had ever seen. Whatever information it was displaying was flying at a mile a minute, and even if he could make sense of the information, it was going far too fast for him to make any sense out of it. What he could make sense out of was a small ball of bright blue electricity that was now pulsing out of one of the eight small inlets on the watch face. A foreign voice deep inside Mark, one he hardly knew was there, told him to reach out and touch the inlet, to feel the electricity. As he did, the same feeling of shock and electricity started at his finger and blazed through his body. It reached out further than before, from his arm where it started, to his neck and to the top of his head through his hair, out again through his waist and to his legs. It reached out and bathed his body in new sensation.
The feeling had lasted for a minute and felt as if it was stretching and controlling Mark's body. The feeling was almost too much for Mark to handle, his head started to throb with pain, his vision becoming dark and distorted. The pain brought his vision crashing inward as he fought his way to the mirror in the corner of the bedroom.
What Mark saw must've been a hallucination. Through his darkening tunnel of vision, he could confirm that his body was indeed changing as it felt. He had grown nearly a foot in height, his skin grey and dark. He began to feel them new sensations throughout his body as he shakily removed his shirt and begun to spring two new arms from below where the others had been.
His muscles were larger, almost dramatically so from what they had been before. He looked at his face, and saw something unfamiliar, if not at least humanoid staring back at him.
His muscles weak from exhaustion, the electricity beginning to fade somewhat from his body, Mark felt darkness creeping closer and closer from the edges of his vision. He began to walk, then shuffle, falling to his knees and inching towards his bed. As he managed to hoist himself into a sitting position on his bed, he figured he'd take second look down onto his body to see if he could confirm what the mirror had told him, and he looked down onto two large alien feet planting themselves on his bedroom floor.
